The following description includes information that may be useful in understanding the present invention. It is not an admission that any of the information provided herein is prior art or relevant to the presently claimed invention, or that any publication specifically or implicitly referenced is prior art.
Various efforts have been placed towards distribution or concentration of sunlight for specific uses. Examples include U.S. Pat. No. 8,513,515 to Gu and U.S. Pat. No. 8,223,433 to Schmaelzle. Known light collecting or collimating apparatuses typically require numerous optical elements to redirect light to an acceptable output beam, and treat each dimension (e.g., X, Y, etc.) of an incident beam on an equal footing. Thus, incident light is redirected or collimated in one dimension in the same manner as any other dimension.
While such an approach could be efficient with respect to light travelling in a first direction, it could be inefficient with respect to light travelling in a second direction. This is especially true in environments having a restricted physical space where the apparatuses are to be deployed. Therefore, existing systems use optical elements having a geometry that results in inefficient uses of at least one of incident light and space.
Thus, there is still a need for improved light concentrating technologies, especially those that could efficiently concentrate dimensions of a light beam differently from one another.